't is because speaker boehner, who i like and you and i have talked about, cannot get -- listen, if he can't get a million bucks threshold on a tax cut through his chamber, what's he going to do get $500,000? it's not going to happen. what i think is going to happen at the white house this afternoon, though, is these folks are going to come in, sit down with the president, they're going to say, okay, we're all jumping over the cliff. so what do we do after the cliff? and that's probably a very good conversation for our nation's political leaders to have. >> jimmy, i grant you what you said is true, because all we're talking about is taxes. which is weird. >> we're talking about a hell of a lot more than taxes, joe. >> no, but jimmy, boehner couldn't get his guys to do the taxes. but if we were focusing on entitlement reform or spending or any of the big issues, joe, then obama couldn't get his base to -- so it's awo-way street we got going. >> takes two to tango. if he could have gotten inside together we might have had a shot of getting this done. sadly this is kind of like watching a last-plac